It’s that time of year when publications hand out awards (we may even succumb to the temptation ourselves) and it’s hardly a surprise that Campaign has chosen Bartle Bogle Hegarty as its agency of the year (for what seems like ever you would probably have made money betting on BBH each year in January).

Anyway BBH is a worthy winner, as we noted recently, getting its new business act into gear (Wonderbra, Waitrose, Virgin Media, the Guardian etc) and producing some fine work, most notably for Audi and Barnardo’s.

Little to argue with there either although Wieden+Kennedy might dispute the network of the year with BBDO. BBDO, as Campaign points out, won every big pitch it entered and also kept its status as the Gunn Report’s highest-ranked network. But W+K is setting the creative standards others are trying to reach these days.

The media agencies are interesting too. Winning network Maxus does seem to have done well, my only problem being that I can’t work out who does what within WPP’s impressive media line-up these days. My mates in media tell me that GroupM (originally a specialist negotiating team) wields all the real power. Perhaps WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell will enlighten me next time he takes me out to lunch.

Media agency of the year PHD seems to win Campaign’s annual accolade even more often than BBH does its one, whether it’s had a good year or not. But it has had a good one this time, particularly internationally, culminating in Hyatt digital and Sony Ericsson. Maybe it should have won the network prize. And what about Carat?

About Stephen Foster

Stephen is a former editor of Marketing Week and London Evening Standard advertising columnist. He wrote City Republic for Brand Republic and is a partner in communications consultancy The Editorial Partnership.